Ballet Bakes Blog: Pascal Johnson

Did you know that (former) Scottish Ballet Artist Pascal Johnson is an avid baker? One look at his Instagram account will make you crave croissants!

He recently joined Soloist Marge Hendrick in our Ballet Bakes series with Graham's Family Dairy (see below) and wrote this blog post about his love of butter.

One of my favourite quotes from the movie Julie and Julia is, “you can never have too much butter.” I wholeheartedly agree with this statement.

Cooking and baking has always been a passion of mine and something that I have learned over time is that everything tastes better with butter. Whether making brioche, pastry or using it with oil to sauté vegetables or fry fish, this heavenly stuff elevates cooking by adding depth of flavour and richness.

Making croissants has recently become an obsession of mine, and you can understand why if you've ever had a really good croissant straight out of the oven. These buttery pastries are light and flaky and are such a treat. Croissants are made by lamination, which is the process of folding butter and dough together in a way to create thin layers of butter within the dough. When the croissants are baked the butter melts and turns to steam and enables a bit of dough to turn it to an especially aerated piece of heaven.

I was recently fortunate enough to work with Graham's Family Dairy, Scottish Ballet’s Health Sponsor in order to bring Ballet Bakes to life. It was such a great opportunity to work with their team and be creative in the kitchen. I especially enjoyed it because dairy is highly present in my diet, as it is an easy source of protein and great for recovery after rehearsals. Even better than that I got some free butter out of it to turn into croissants...